When Nina Eggens finally managed to get a glimpse of her fire-stricken vintage furniture shop, the only thing that was left was a few plant pots and the sign above the door.

Beneath the moss green strip proclaiming the entrance to Nina's Aberdeenshire shop, the blown out windows revealed the extent of the damage that had reduced her once treasured business to a pile of ash.

Hundreds of priceless pieces of vintage crockery were obliterated, carefully restored furniture gone and one-off vintage finds from Nina's travels reduced to charred splinters.

"Inside the roof had caved in, there was no furniture left, there was absolutely nothing, just a big mound of ash," the 37-year-old says.

"It's really surreal. For the past four years I've been in there all the time creating my little piece of vintage paradise.

"To go back there and see nothing left of it is pretty devastating. I lost all of that."

Nina's Apartment was one of a number of businesses at Lethenty Mill in Inverurie that was engulfed by flames in the early hours of April 28.

A former flour mill in Aberdeenshire, home to photographers, cabinetmakers and Nina's business among others, went up in smoke as 55 firefighters battled to get the blaze under control.

The building was so badly damaged that Scottish Fire Service investigators have so far been unable to establish the cause of the incident, although it is not thought to have been intentional.

Learning of the news while making her two children breakfast, Nina raced to her shop, spotting plumes of smoke rising into the sky where her business once sat. Now it is a shell, four years of collecting and restoration and honing reduced to nothing.

"It's not like I can go to a wholesaler and just fill my shop again. I've started slowly collecting things again but to be honest I'm exhausted," she explains.

"I did a lot of driving over the past four years all around the country and the north east to source furniture and it's pretty physical work to get it in the shop. To have to start from scratch is a really daunting prospect."

The nature of running an antiques business is risky and getting insurance can often prove difficult, Nina said.

Pieces are purchased privately and Nina says it is hard to prove to an insurer just how much a business is worth.

When Lethenty Mill went up in flames it took with it more than people had anticipated.

"What really gets me is people say, 'oh how are you getting on with your insurance?' and when I tell them I wasn't insured they are horrified," Nina says.

"Find an antiques dealer who is properly insured - it's a really tricky type of business.

"A lot of dealers in this business don't insure themselves for fire and contents. It may sound strange [but] it was a quirky old building and I took the risk for not insuring it for fire and theft."

For the next week, Nina struggled to comprehend what had happened to her livelihood.

"It felt like a bereavement. I would wake up in the morning and cry.

"Normally I would hop in my car to go to my shop to do whatever. And I couldn't go anywhere, I felt paralysed for the first week.

"My baby had gone. Where am I going to go, what am I going to do? It felt like I had lost a limb."

Nina's customers and contacts quickly came to her aid offering messages of support, flowers and bottles of wine.

Aberdeen Antiques Centre offered a small space for her to work from in exchange for some business advice and, just over a month on, Nina has poured her energy into developing her blog to inspire readers to bring vintage magic into their own homes.

But she is wary of setting up shop again after noticing a decline in customers perusing her store, which she attributes to Aberdeen's oil and gas downturn.

Thousands of workers have lost their jobs, including Nina's husband.

"With the oil crash, I must admit I didn't think most of my customers were oil-based," Nina says.

"But I did notice a slowing down of sales and everybody was saying the same things, businesses are struggling with selling stuff. My husband is being laid off as well.

"A lot of people aspire to have a shop, they have this romantic idea of running a business and running a shop.

"I've done it for four years and it's great but it's very lonely and it's very hard, it's a lot of pressure to cover your bills every month.

"Life is funny, you think you've got it all sussed then something happens."

"If an opportunity arises where it's a very attractive idea to open a shop again in a nice location then, yes, never say never.

"But I want to have a little bit of a break from the pressure of having to pay rent, having to stock the place, to find buyers constantly."

Nina's Apartment may return as it was or it may never recover from the fire but with a mind buzzing with new ideas and ways to develop the business into something that works in the current economic climate, Nina is confident she at least can pick herself up and become anything she wants, be it an interior designer, consultant or shop curator.

"I'm not one to sit in the corner and cry forever," she says.

A few days after the fire that changed her life, Nina tentatively began browsing to slowly rebuild her business from the ashes.

She explains: "The week after the fire, I bought in a charity shop in Aberdeen a 1960s tea set and that is the only thing that is sitting in my house.

"I thought, 'OK, this is the start of my collection again'."